The prosaically named “Review of Navigation Team 2018 Quarter 2 Report” was released by the City Auditor this month, but don’t let the uninspired title keep you away.
This third report on the city’s unsheltered street outreach response reveals a crisis-driven and reactive system that is often resistant to evaluation, analysis and change.
A system that is long on policing and short on relationship building. One that is overly focused on problem encampments, and outright negligent in regard to issues of public health.
Recommendations include greater focus on newly homeless individuals with more access to diversion resources; more coordination between the three departments and eight agencies that hold city street outreach contracts; independent evaluation of the Navigation Team; and a much more serious approach to issues of public hygiene such as toilet and shower facilities.
This last piece, access to toilets and showers, is where Seattle’s failure is perhaps most abysmal. Our history here is long and disappointing.
In 2004, Seattle infamously provided public toilets by spending $5 million on just five self-cleaning facilities with automatic doors. These were installed in Pioneer Square, Capitol Hill, the central waterfront, Pike Place Market and the International District.
In 2004, Seattle infamously provided public toilets by spending $5 million on just five self-cleaning facilities with automatic doors.
After complaints that the high-tech toilets were vectors of drug use and prostitution, the City closed them down in 2008. A Thurston County racetrack owner bought all five on ebay for $12,549.
In 2012, Mayor Mike McGinn bravely considered bringing a Portland Loo to Pioneer Square. This patented idea for a public bathroom has spread from Portland to Vancouver, and was designed to meet the security and cleaning concerns raised by Seattle’s epic $5 million failure.
After half a decade of back and forth that included money in the city budget, dreams of a downtown public toilet eventually died.
But never say never. Ballard Commons will get a Portland Loo this summer. The process for that started in 2015.
Public toilets seem to be Seattle’s political third rail, and the auditor’s report doesn’t hold back on where this has left us. According to the auditor, there are only six 24/7 city funded toilets to meet the needs of 4,488 unsheltered homeless people in Seattle. The majority of these, the auditors found, have damage that limit their usability.
If the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) standards of one toilet per twenty people were applied, the report states, “Seattle’s unsheltered population would require proximate access to approximately 224 toilets.”
If the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) standards of one toilet per twenty people were applied, the report states, “Seattle’s unsheltered population would require proximate access to approximately 224 toilets.”
In Dr. Jose Rizal Park, homeless people use an embankment as an open latrine, and pieces of used hypodermic needles line the pathway. One homeless woman interviewed by the auditor said her solution to no toilets is to simply not drink water. That way she won’t need to pee.
Other cities are able to get this right. San Francisco’s Mobile Pit Stop approach is especially worthy of consideration. In 2014, that city opened three flexible sites in the Tenderloin after middle school kids complained of navigating human waste during their walk to school.
Four years later, the program has expanded to 25 sites in 12 neighborhoods.
These mobile facilities provide safe and clean public toilets that can be moved in response to need. All units have running water, soap, and hand towels, as well as sharps containers and dog waste receptacles.
Paid attendants staff each Mobile Pit Stop. This ensures proper usage while creating jobs for people who face barriers to employment.
Expensive? Not especially. A portable restroom unit can be purchased for $73,000. This is about one-third the cost of a Portland Loo. Staffing for each unit costs about $82,000 annually. A service truck to vacuum the units out runs about $193,000.
For under one million dollars, Seattle could meet the one-time expenses involved in launching ten Mobile Pit Stops, and flexibly serve the critical public health needs of unsheltered homeless people for about the same amount annually.
For under one million dollars, Seattle could meet the one-time expenses involved in launching ten Mobile Pit Stops.
That’s an idea worth considering. One among many.
Under our Homeless State of Emergency, city policy on unsheltered homelessness is in the hands of Mayor Durkan. She needs to know we’re paying attention.
Councilmember Lisa Herbold’s Civil Rights, Utilities, Economic Development, and Arts Committee will hear testimony from the City Auditor on Tuesday, Feb. 26, at 9 am. Be there.
RELATED ARTICLE: One man’s quest to provide sanitation to homeless people is just a drop in the bucket
Tim Harris is the Founding Director Real Change and has been active as a poor people’s organizer for more than two decades. Prior to moving to Seattle in 1994, Harris founded street newspaper Spare Change in Boston while working as Executive Director of Boston Jobs with Peace.
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